I changed my guitar’s strings and practiced all the songs: on Saturday night I’m performing with Fiamma Fumana at a festival I am really intrigued by, Balla Coi Cinghiali. I think it will be the last FF show for quite a while. The creativity crisis I sense in the music scene; Jessica’s decision to leave the band, after she became a mother ; the various commitments of other FF members; and the shift in my own interests made me conclude that going on would be a mistake. Music is too beautiful and too important to be made on the side, using one’s consummate experience. I can’t even imagine making another album, in the absence of an urgent, vital message to get out to the world. Better to stop, think, maybe try out new stuff.

This is no time for giving speeches. I wish to thank everyone who sang, played, danced, listened, believed. I will never forget you. I still believe in the vision of Italy’s traditional music as living matter, to be danced in clubs, played in the proverbial garages and kept near to our hearts. I am certain that this music will stay with me, and maybe one day I will feel that my contribution is needed again. Saturday, at BCC, I will perform with a naked heart. That’s all folks.

Domenica pioveva. Quindi era perfetto per passare una giornata all’ARCI Metissage insieme a Costantino e a un gruppo di persone conosciute da poco. Il clima era da club di aeromodellisti anni 70 (io ero un bambino, ma mi ricordo i modellini Airfix, e ho fatto anche in tempo a montarne un po’). Programma vago: “facciamo qualcosa da presentare al salone del mobile”. Però la tecnologia è roba seria: Arduino, cioè un microcontrollore che permette di connettere il mondo fisico (sensori, led, componenti meccaniche) con i computer, e quindi con il web.

Choco si è intestata lo sviluppo del concetto: “qualcosa” è diventato il Pop Culture Meter, cioè una lampada con sei gruppi di LED a intensità variabile. A controllare l’intensità non sono banali potenziometri – e ti pareva – ma la frequenza relativa con cui sei parole chiave compaiono nella timeline pubblica di Twitter in tempo reale. Le parole che abbiamo scelto: internet, god, sex, money, terrorism, crisis, lolcats. A seconda del “mood” dei 12 milioni di utenti di Twitter, quindi, il Pop Culture Meter illumina più o meno i gruppi di LED che corrispondono a queste parole, e fornisce una visualizzazione rozza ma immediata dello stato emotivo dei Twittatori.

Ivan guidava il gruppo degli sviluppatori software, riconoscibili per i MacBook Pro ricoperti di adesivi.  Insieme hanno scritto un’applicazione che legge la timeline di Twitter alla ricerca delle parole chiave, ne conta la frequenza, la normalizza e passa i valori all’Arduino, che poi li smista ai controller dei LED. Massimo, naturalmente, sovrintendeva al gruppo degli hardwaristi, riconoscibili perché usano veri cacciaviti e pinze tagliafili.

Il Pop Culture Meter non è un’innovazione che scuoterà il mondo dalle fondamenta, ma è un concetto divertente ed è stata realizzata. Ha richiesto una domenica pomeriggio, un gruppo NON selezionato (come prova il fatto che hanno invitato me, che non so fare assolutamente niente) e zero soldi o quasi, è fatta con materiali di scarto (a parte i Mac e l’Arduino, ovviamente). E’ una cosa che dà da pensare. Cosa succederebbe alla società dei consumi se tutti si mettessero a fare le loro lampade?

O le loro biciclette? Prima di andare a casa siamo passati alla Ciclofficina di via Castilia. Non c’è dubbio che gli hackers delle bici con i loro attrezzi in comune, i pezzi di ricambio riciclati e le moke giganti per il caffè andrebbero d’accordissimo con gli hackers dell’informatica con i loro MacBook e le ceste piene di componenti. Sono anche vicini di casa. Magari vanno già d’accordissimo.

Penso che il mondo stia cambiando un po’. Non è il web che fa la differenza: è l’attitudine. Devo pensarci bene anche per i creativi di Kublai e i Fiamma Fumana.

I will spend Women’s Day with my dear mondine. Not to be missed, for sure: the Bergamo Film Meeting presents From mother to daughter – The movie; the Choir of Novi will be there; and, obviously, the ladies will sing – preventing them to do so would be impossible! At the Auditorium of piazza della Libertà 2, 5.15 p.m. of Sunday, March 8th.

Nel 2008 si è chiuso un ciclo importante per i Fiamma Fumana. Abbiamo realizzato, dopo quattro anni di lavoro, il sogno di portare le mondine in tour con noi in America; e abbiamo presentato il film Di madre in  figlia ai festival del cinema di Toronto e Torino. Rimane da fare un po’ di lavoro promozionale sul film, ma fondamentalmente quell’avventura si conclude, è tempo di guardare avanti.

Abbiamo intenzione di cominciare un ciclo nuovo in un modo bellissimo: guardandoci intorno per cercare persone nuove da conoscere, con cui avere scambi e collaborare. Come sempre, siamo particolarmente interessati a musiciste donne, soprattutto a violiniste, fisarmoniciste, suonatrici di piva, zampogna e cornamuse varie, ghironda etc.; ma in realtà vorremmo tenerci aperti a proposte da ragazze che suonano anche altri strumenti – e perfino, perché no, da musicisti maschi! – purché in qualche modo rapportabili al nostro mondo. Se siete interessate, proponetevi lasciando un commento a questo blog o cercando Paolo Perego, Roberta Carrieri o MissyJay sui vari social network; se non lo siete, vi siamo molto grati se fate girare la notizia.

“The Mondine choir blows Torino Film Festival away”. You’re telling me, buddy. I was close to tears, again.

So, nice, I can’t wait to see the Mondine again (not to mention Fiamma Fumana, now resting after the American tour)! And the occasion is really mellow, just a party really, the film is done. We only need to walk the red carpet, then off to a dinner with some red Lambrusco. Meanwhile, Davide and Andrea sent me this beautiful “Mondine – Di madre in figlia” trailer.

Repubblica.it, the most important Italian information website, devotes a special to the From mother to daughter project. Good pics, good videos, good vibes. The current version, we think, gets too personalistic on me, but we wrote to our friend Carlotta, the author of the piece, to edit it out. There are also a few minor factual mistakes: of course I am not in Modena City Ramblers anymore, this project is branded Fiamma Fumana!

So, we have a date for the European première of Mondine – From mother to daughter, the documentary movie starring Fiamma Fumana and the Mondine di Novi Choir (I already wrote about the world première in Toronto). We’ll be guests of Torino Film Festival; the show is scheduled for November 26th at 4.00 pm at Theater 1 of Cinema Massimo, in Via Verdi 18. We’ll be there. Mondine will be there. The director and producer will be there. Will you?

One year later we are back in Shiprock, New Mexico, guests of our friend Mark Amo (director of the Performing Arts Center). Shiprock is in the Navajo Nation terrritory, and pretty much all the students of the local high school are Navajo. The school boasts a choir, and last year its director Bonnie Lee invited us to attend one of their rehearsals. That resulted in a strange mutual sympathy, guarded on their part, perhaps a little distracted on ours, as strangers passing through. This year they wrote us: the choir has been studying two of our songs, Angiolina and Mariuleina, which in the album we sing together with the Choir of mondine di Novi. Can they come and sing them with us? Sure, I reply. A choir of 46 Navajo teenagers singing in the Emilian dialect? That does not happen every day to me.

I talk to Bonnie Lee: I really want to do Bella Ciao world version with this choir, as we did wikth many artists from all over the world. Have you got a Navajo song to sing for that number? Bonnie Lee, hesitates, that’s pushing it too far. I won’t have it: we are guests here, the Diné (this is their word for themselves, it was the Spaniards calling them Navajos) langage should be heard in this concert. Some of the boys nod in agreement, and then it’s decided. I’d like a traditional melody, but the only thing they can sing is a hymn, “Amazing Grace”, translated into Diné.

So we do it: alongside Italian and the Emilian dialect, the guttural and ASPIRATI sounds of the Diné language resonate on the stage. The audience – almost all native – is really happy. Roberta calls on the applause: “The Chieftains Choir!” Cheers. I echo her: “The Navajo Nation!”. More cheering. We thank them in Diné: “Akh’ie hé!”. The boys give me bear hugs and slap my back.

The next day, over lunch, we discuss it with Keith, who works with Mark at the Performing Arts Centre (but Mark is white, Keith is native). I understand that music, for native Americans, is not as important a cultural marker as it is for us Europeans: for them it has a mostly ceremonial function, so the idea of performing it in a theater is a foreign one to them, as would be for us that of celebrating a Mass before an audience, for money.

“It seems to me the main identity marker to you is rather the language, Keith. Shame that the kids do not speak it much.”

“Many do speak it in the family, bu they are embarassed to speak it in front of their friends.”

“I understand this, but I think it is wrong. In Italy dialects are almost gone for the same reason. My grandparents would refuse to speak dialect to us, they wanted us to grow up as Italians, with no local identity. Today I regret not speaking it better, not having heard and memorized more old stories. As a grown up I have started to use dialect again as an intimate language: if I talk to you in dialect, it means you are my friend.”

Keith is clearly intrigued. He tells me about native music: apparently some young people are cautiously experimenting incremental innovations on drum technique (“In some ceremonies the young would use not a single drum, but two or even three, of different sizes giving different sounds; also, they hit the drum on the edges, or slide their hands on it to obtain different notes”). I answer that innovation is necessary for the tradition to be alive, but great respect for the music must be there as well. To make sure I am being respectful when I do something new with the music, I talk to mondine, who are like the elders of our tribe. If they like it, I will stand up for my music even against hell’s storm troops, and no one is going to tell me bullshit like “real trad music does not use grooves”.

Keith is warming up to the idea. “We, too, ask the elders for their advice when we do something new. If they approve you, you feel very strong: if your integrity is being questioned they will come out and say, we approved what he did, we told him to it that way. With that backing, you can’t really go wrong.

As he speaks, he slips into Diné: he says a sentence in Diné, then he translates it into English for me, then another one in Diné, then English again. I am so absorbed in what he says that I don’t get the implications of him using his native language so freely with an obviously non-native person and a relative stranger. I do not want to embarass him, so I put it down as a joke as I am going to wash my hands:

You are talking to me in Diné, so this means you are my friend, right?

When I’m back, Mark is paying the bill, time to move on. Keith shakes my hand and speaks to ne in Diné. He does not translate. This time I understand his offer of friendship right away, and I want to reciprocate. I manage to find a few sentences in dialect. “A gh’è chès c’ag tornàm a vèder, Keith. Stè bèin, Dio a’t bendéssa!”

Few times like today has it been clearer to me why world music means so much to me. It helps to track new trails for people to meet and understand each other, helped – not hindered, whatever Sam Huntington might say – by their cultural differences. Maybe it’s the light of the autumn sun on the desert, or the sound of the Diné language, or the two days spent in a place where native Americans are a majority, but I feel a little like Keith and I are scouts who have just found a trail. And it looks promising.